On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 8:58 PM, Jim Anderson <jimanderson.on@...>wrote:

>
>
> Dear Yong Peng, Mahinda, and Nina,
>
> << thank you for the interesting discussion on the non-vikara.na suffix.
> It
> is noteworthy to know the Pali grammarians creatively added a new category
> of suffixes which help their students in understanding Pali verbs without
> additional labour on Sanskrit. However, to make up any excuse, worse if
> it's
> an ideological one, to deny the further study of the subject, is
> unacceptable and also unthinkable. Even so, this is interesting to me. As
> an
> amateur sociologist, I am interested in the study of extreme ideas,
> especially political and religious ideologies, and their effects on various
> functions of society. >>
>

Dear Ong, Jim and others,

Personally, I am (now) inclined to think it is the ideological factor that
has been predominant. It had become a religious belief, a di.t.hi., so not
really Buddhistic.(There is somewhere the idea that a child kept isolated
from socity would start to speak Maagadhii.) But we know such things happen,
with the best of intentions. Hindus called Sanskrit the language of gods.
I entirely agree with Jim that the traditional grammars are valuable and
absolutely deserve to be studied.They are indispensable.The only point I
have been making is that for a 'scientific' (as opposed to a 'practical')
understanding of the Pali language, the historical perspective is important.
Comparison with Sanskrit often (though not always) provides that perspecive.
This is because all other ancient Prakrits have vanished.

As for Ong's point about the proper words to translate vikara.na, almost all
modern writers have used "conjugational sign". This is appropriate because
we start conjugating a verb after preparing a 'stem' by, among other
things, adding the vikarana to the root;and the vikara.na defines the gana
or the group or class to which the root belongs. The second group, the
adaadi ga.na however does not add a vikara.na to prepare the stem, i.e., the
root and stem are the same.

Mahinda


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